Tag: direct imaging

Artist impression of Proxima Centauri c. Press “HD” on the player for the best image quality (E. Tasker).

The discovery of Proxima Centauri b in 2016 caused a flood excitement. We had found an extrasolar planet around our nearest star, making this the closest possible world outside of our solar system!

But despite its proximity, discovering more about this planet is difficult. Proxima Centauri b was found via the radial velocity technique, which measures the star’s wobble due to the gravity of the orbiting planet. This technique gives a minimum mass, the average distance between the star and planet and the time for one orbit, but no details about conditions on the planet surface.

If the planet had transited its star, we might have tried detecting starlight that passed through the planet’s atmosphere. This technique is known as transit spectroscopy, and reveals the composition of a planet’s atmosphere by detecting what wavelengths of light are absorbed by the molecules in the planet’s air. But searches for a transit proved fruitless, suggesting the planet’s orbit did not pass in front of the star from our viewpoint.

The radial velocity technique measures the motion of the star due to the gravity of the planet. As the star moves away from the Earth, its light becomes stretched and redder. As it moves back towards Earth, the light shifts to bluer wavelengths. The technique gives the planet’s period, distance from the star and its minimum mass. (E. Tasker)

Another option for planet characterization is to capture a direct image of the planet. This is one of the most exciting observational techniques, as it reveals the planet itself, not its influence on the star. Temporal changes in the planet’s light could reveal surface features as the planet rotates, and if enough light is detected to analyze different wavelengths, then the atmospheric composition could be deduced.

But direct imaging requires that the planet’s light can be differentiated from the much brighter star. With our current instruments, Proxima Centauri b orbits too close to its star to be distinguished. This seemed to close the door on finding out more about our nearest neighbors, until the discovery of a second planet in the system was announced early this year.

Also identified via the radial velocity technique, Proxima Centauri c has a minimum mass of 5.8 Earth masses. It sits further out than its sibling, with a chilly orbit that takes 5.2… Read more

Enlarge and enjoy. Fomalhaut b on its very long (1,700 year) and elliptica orbit, as seen here in five images taken by the Hubble Space Telescope over seven years. The reference to “20 au” means that the bar shows a distance of 20 astronomical units, or 20 times the distance from the sun to the Earth. (Jason Wang/Paul Kalas; UC Berkeley)

Direct imaging of exoplanets remains in its infancy, but goodness what a treat it is already and what a promise of things to come.

Almost all of the 3,714 exoplanets confirmed so far were detected via the powerful but indirect transit and radial velocity methods — measures of slightly decreased light as a planet crosses in front of its star, or the measured wobble of a star caused by the gravitational pull of a planet.

But now 44 planets have also been detected by telescopes — in space and on the ground — looking directly at distant stars. Using increasingly sophisticated coronagraphs to block out the blinding light of the stars, these tiny and often difficult-to-identify specks are nonetheless results that are precious to scientists and the public.

To me, they make exoplanet science accessible as perhaps nothing else so far. Additionally, they strike me as moving — and I don’t mean in orbit. Rather, as when you see your own insides via x-rays or MRIs, direct imaging of exoplanets provides a glimpse into the otherwise hidden realities of our world.

And in the years ahead – actually, most likely the decades ahead — this kind of direct imaging of our astronomical neighborhood will become increasingly powerful and common.

This is how the astronomers studying the Fomalhaut system describe what you are seeing:

“The Fomalhaut system harbors a large ring of rocky debris that is analogous to our Kuiper belt. Inside this ring, the planet Fomalhaut b is on a trajectory that will send it far beyond the ring in a highly elliptical orbit.

“The nature of the planet remains mysterious, with the leading theory being the planet is surrounded by its own ring or a sphere of dust.”

A simulation of one possible orbit for Fomalhaut b derived from the analysis of Hubble Space Telescope data between 2004 and 2012, presented in January 2013 by astronomers Paul Kalas and James Graham of Berkeley, Michael Fitzgerald of UCLA and Mark Clampin of NASA/Goddard. (Paul Kalas)

The era of directly imaging exoplanets has only just begun, but the science and viewing pleasures to come are appealingly apparent.

This evocative movie of four planets more massive than Jupiter orbiting the young star HR 8799 is a composite of sorts, including images taken over seven years at the W.M. Keck observatory in Hawaii.

The movie clearly doesn’t show full orbits, which will take many more years to collect. The closest-in planet circles the star in around 40 years; the furthest takes more than 400 years.

But as described by Jason Wang, an astronomy graduate student at the University of California, Berkeley, researchers think that the four planets may well be in resonance with each other.

In this case it’s a one-two-four-eight resonance, meaning that each planet has an orbital period in nearly precise ratio with the others in the system.

The black circle in the center of the image is part of the observing and analyzing effort to block the blinding light of the star, and thus make the planets visible.

The images were initially captured by a team of astronomers including Christian Marois of the National Research Council of Canada’s Herzberg Institute of Astrophysics, who analyzed the data. The movie animation was put together by Wang, who is part of the Berkeley arm of the Nexus for Exoplanet System Science (NExSS), a NASA-sponsored group formed to encourage interdisciplinary exoplanet science.

The star HR 8799 has already played a pioneering role in the evolution of direct imaging of exoplanets. In 2008, the Marois group announced discovery of three of the four HR 8799 planets using direct imaging for the first time. On the same day that a different team announced the direct imaging of a planet orbiting the star Fomalhaut.

This false-color composite image traces the motion of the planet Fomalhaut b, a world captured by direct imaging. (NASA, ESA, and P. Kalas, University of California, Berkeley and SETI Institute)

HR 8799 is 129 light years away in the constellation of Pegasus. By coincidence, it is quite close to the star 51 Pegasi, where the first exoplanet was detected in 1995. It is less than 60 million years old, Wang said, and is almost five times brighter than the sun.

Wang said that the animation is based on eight observations of the planets since 2009. He then used a motion interpolation algorithm to draw the orbit between those points.… Read more

Sometimes images arrive that make it clear that the space age is not a throw-away line, but a reality.

This one was taken by a satellite orbiting Mars, and it shows the Earth and the moon. Kind of remarkable, given that the camera — the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter — was 127 million miles away

And HiRISE is not a far-seeing telescope, but rather a camera designed to look down on Mars from 160 to 200 miles away. It’s job (among other tasks) is to image the terrain, measure the compounds and minerals below, and keep an eye on Mars dust storms, climate, and the downhill steaks that periodically appear on some inclines and may contain surface salty water.

The image is a composite image of Earth and its moon, combining the best Earth image with the best moon image from four sets of images acquired on Nov. 20, 2016 by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.

Each was separately processed prior to combining them so that the moon is bright enough to see. The moon is much darker than Earth and would barely be visible at the same brightness scale as Earth. The combined view retains the correct sizes and positions of the two relative to each other.

This is how JPL described the details:

HiRISE takes images in three wavelength bands: infrared, red, and blue-green. These are displayed here as red, green, and blue, respectively. This is similar to Landsat images in which vegetation appears red. The reddish feature in the middle of the Earth image is Australia. Southeast Asia appears as the reddish area (due to vegetation) near the top; Antarctica is the bright blob at bottom-left. Other bright areas are clouds.

What I find especially intriguing about the image is that it is precisely the kind of “direct imaging” that the exoplanet community hopes to some day do with distant planets. With this kind of imaging, scientists not only can detect the glints of water, the presence of land, the dynamics of clouds and climate, but they can also get better spectrographic measurements of what chemicals are present.

Some exoplanets are being painstakingly direct imaged, but the difficulty factor is high and the result is most likely one or two pixels. And since the planets are orbiting stars that send out light that hides any exoplanets present, coronagraphs are needed inside the telescopes to block out the sun and its rays.… Read more

A notional version of an observatory for the 2030s that could provide revolutionary direct imaging of exoplanets. GSFC/JPL/STScI

Assuming for a moment that life exists on some exoplanets, how might researchers detect it?

This is hardly a new question. More than ten years ago, competing teams of exo-scientists and engineers came up with proposals for a NASA flagship space observatory capable of identifying possible biosignatures on distant planets. No consensus was reached, however, and no mission was developed.

But early this year, NASA Astrophysics Division Director Paul Hertz announced the formation of four formal Science and Technology Definition Teams to analyze proposals for a grand space observatory for the 2030s. Two of them in particular would make possible the kind of super-high resolution viewing needed to understand the essential characteristics of exoplanets. As now conceived, that would include a capability to detect molecules in distant atmospheres that are associated with living things.

These two exo-friendly missions are the Large Ultraviolet/Optical/Infrared (LUVOIR) Surveyor and the Habitable Exoplanet (HabEx) Imaging Mission. Both would be on the scale of, and in the tradition of, scientifically and technically ground-breaking space observatories such as the Hubble and the James Webb Space Telescope, scheduled to launch in 2018. These flagship missions provide once in a decade opportunities to move space science dramatically forward, and not-surprisingly at a generally steep cost.

A simulated spiral galaxy as viewed by Hubble, and as viewed by the kind of high definition space telescope now under study. Hubble detects the bulge and disk, but only the high definition image resolves the galaxy’s star-forming regions and its dwarf satellite. The zoom shows the inner disk region, where only high definition can resolve the star-forming regions and separate them from the redder, more distributed old stellar population. (D. Ceverino, C. Moody, G. Snyder, and Z. Levay (STScI)

Because the stakes are so high, planning and development takes place over decades — twenty years is the typical time elapsed between the conception of a grand flagship mission and its launch. So while what is happening now with the science and technology definition teams is only a beginning — albeit one with quite a heritage already — it’s an essential, significant and broadly-supported start. Over the next three years, the teams will undertake deep dives into the possibilities and pitfalls of LUVOIR and HabEx, as well as the two other proposals. There’s a decent chance that a version of one of the four will become a reality.… Read more

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There are many worlds out there waiting to fire your imagination. This site is for everyone interested in the burgeoning field of exoplanet detection and research, from the general public to scientists in the field. It will present columns, news stories and in-depth features, as well as the work of guest writers.

The “Many Worlds” column is supported by the Lunar Planetary Institute/USRA and informed by NASA's NExSS initiative, a research coordination network dedicated to the study of planetary habitability. Any opinions expressed are the author’s alone.